Profit from Sickness: The Case of Technology-Driven Healthcare

Abstract

The increasing corporatization and growing dependence of the healthcare system on technology has brought about a radical transformation to the entire mission of the healthcare system. Based on the profit motive, the pharmaceutical and technological enterprises that hugely control the healthcare system today have so transformed the system that it has now emerged as one of the most profiteering domains. The historical tragedy is that the profit is earned over sickness. There has indeed been an attempt to generate sickness as demanded both by health care devices as well as by the pharmaceutical industries having detrimental impact on people’s right to health. Present paper, which critically questions the logic and motives of the emerging healthcare system, argues that under the contemporary neo-liberal economies, diseases and patients are objects of business interests of the largely privatized for-profit healthcare industry. Profit from these objects emerges not only through sale of drugs or cure, but also from expensive hi-tech testing and ‘treatment’ technologies. Creation of new patients by diagnosing more diseases to treat is contributed by a large medical-industrial complex today. The paper is of the view that remedies to these crises demand radical a U-turn to the system itself wherein the health care seekers rather than the health care providers would occupy the center stage.